From the start of the Democratic campaign, I’ve heard Clinton supporters lean on the concept of “electability.”
“You MUST support Clinton!” they exclaim. “Obviously a socialist can’t win the general election, and do you want to see a REPUBLICAN in the WHITE HOUSE?!?!”
Well, no, we don’t want to see a Republican in the White House, any more than you do. That’s the problem. You see, a socialist can win the general. In fact, this year, he’s almost certainly the only Democrat who can. If Clinton wants to follow her own principles, she’ll fold up her campaign and throw her support to Sanders, because she doesn’t have a chance in November.
Clinton’s numbers on honesty and trustworthiness are so far underwater it isn’t funny. Barely one out of three people in the three largest swing states consider her to be trutstworthy (1)— and that’s what they think right now, before Trump starts pounding on her. Sanders was a gentleman about her email issues… Trump won’t be, and the whole mess will follow her right into November.
Her likability is no better than her trustworthiness, among nationwide voters. Her overall favorables have been underwater for as long as anyone can remember. (2) Yes, this is largely the result of constant right-wing hammering, but that doesn’t matter in terms of electability; all it shows is that constant right-wing hammering WORKS. And we’d better take that into account in choosing a candidate to run against someone who — as unlikable as he is to the bulk of the population — has enough rabid dogs in his corner to easily make the difference in a presidential election, which are always close among the normal voting population these days.
On top of all that, Clinton goes in with one disadvantage which would probably be enough to sink her all by itself: for twenty years, the Republicans have been training their people to salivate at the sound of her last name. She and her husband have become the poster children, even more than Obama has, for everything that is wrong with being non-rabidly-conservative in this country. Every possible form of right-wing dog whistle, from treason to lesbianism. has been applied to her, and reinforced over the course of a full generation. Demonizing Clinton is the Republican Party’s official sport.
The thing is, it works. We know it works because of the neurology of lies (it takes less energy for out brain to accept them than reject them, so most of the time we do) (3) and the neurology of repetition — our brains believe lies we’re told over and over, even when we start out disbelieving them. (4) We know it works because of how overwhelming Sanders’ lead is over Clinton among independents… those same independents she will need to win over to have a hope of winning the general. (5)
If Sanders runs, the Republicans will bring out their base, plus have Trump’s brownshirts — however many of them hadn’t been voting Republicans beforehand. That’s a tall order to beat. But if Clinton runs, they will also have every single nonvoting conservative who ever lived and breathed hatred of the Clinton name. I’m old enough to remember when George Pataki won the governorship of New York. A stunned Democratic campaign worker said, “We brought out our base. But the conservatives showed up as if they were giving away gold at the polls.”
That’s exactly what’s going to happen if Clinton is the Democratic nominee — the conservatives will show up as if they’re giving away gold. The chance to vote against a Clinton is that exciting to them.
And yet, even all those reasons aren’t the biggest thing Clinton’s got going against her. The biggest problem is simply this: the American people are just not buying traditional politicians this year.
If Trump’s unstoppable rise to the top of the Republican pack hasn’t taught you anything else, for God’s sake let it teach you that. This year is not like any election we’ve ever seen. This is the year populist rage has exploded uncontainably, among all parties and all ideologies, and NO ordinary, play-by-the-rules politician has a chance.
Clinton has been hanging on with difficulty, in a two-way race in which she owns all the help the party’s formidable money and organizational backing can give her. She’s won two states very narrowly, and in both cases with the use of some questionable tactics (starting the caucus two hours late in Nevada led to a lot of working people, who are Sanders’ prime supporters, having to leave; there are other irregularities already surfacing in Nevada, and those in Iowa are well known). She’s lost the third in a blowout. This is the best an establishment politician can possibly do this year, even within the confines of the fairly disciplined and cautious Democratic Party. On the other side, the Republicans have a more disorganized party and the anti-populist vote is split among several contenders, so they don’t stand a chance. Their populist spokesperson is dominating.
[Note that I do not blame Clinton personally, or her official campaign, for the debacles in the Iowa and Nevada caucuses. Local enthusiasts took volunteer organizational roles and appear to have used them too eagerly to ensure advantages for their favorite candidate; this, in itself, is not her fault. How her campaign has reacted has left something to be desired, but my point here isn’t about how badly the caucuses were handled, either on the ground or afterward; it’s about how little “winning” them says about her ability to secure votes in the general election against a populist candidate.]
The American people are rising up in frustration this year, and the symbol they’ve chose instead of the guillotine — so far, at least! — is the populist presidential candidate. They will have one for president. If you give them a Democratic populist, then the Democratic party stands a decent chance of winning, because Trump turns off a lot of people with the crazy and the evil and the outright boorish. But if you give them a symbol of the business-as-usual politician; exactly the kind of creature for whose blood they are howling, she will be torn to pieces. Trump will make mincemeat out of her.
So, for everyone who has been telling me that it is vital for all Sanders supporters to hold their noses and do the hard thing in order to prevent the Republicans from winning the general: why, yes. Yes it is. It is also vital for all Clinton supporters to hold their noses and do the hard thing in order to prevent the Republicans from winning the general. In this case, that means writing to your candidate and pressuring her to step down and support the only candidate who has a chance to win in November. It means telling the Superdelegates — a group who were invented in the first place ostensibly to prevent the primary process from yielding a candidate who was unelectable in the general! — to do their jobs and support the candidate which all polls are showing can beat the Republicans. Because that sure as shootin’ isn’t Clinton. She trails virtually every single Republican candidate in the most recent poll, and Sanders defeats every one of them. (7)
I like and admire Ms. Clinton. She’s a capable, intelligent stateswoman with a lot to offer this country. She might well make a good president some year. But she will never have the chance this year. She has a moral obligation to put the welfare of the nation ahead of her personal ambition, and end her campaign, throwing her support unequivocally to Bernie Sanders so we can fight the Republicans with the strongest possible candidate in November.
(P.S. She’d make an excellent ambassador to the United Nations, incidentally, Bernie. Just sayin’.)
1) www.washingtonpost.com/…
2) www.washingtonpost.com/…
3) www.huffingtonpost.com/…
4) psychcentral.com/…
5) www.dailykos.com/…
6) usuncut.com/… and www.desmoinesregister.com/…
7) www.quinnipiac.edu/… [Ironically, the one candidate Clinton leads in this poll — by a sliver of 1% — is Trump. I don’t think this can possibly last once the Republicans unite around him, and would not want to count on a 1% lead when we have a candidate who is leading him by 6% anyway.]
